The Carpetbaggers

The Carpetbaggers is the title of a 1961 bestselling novel by Harold Robbins, which was adapted into a 1964 movie of the same title.

Related Topics:
1961 - Harold Robbins - 1964

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The word carpetbaggers in the title does not refer to the Civil War opportunists. It has the generic meaning of a presumptuous newcomer who enters a new territory seeking success. In this case, the territory is the movie industry, and the newcomer is a wealthy heir to an industrial fortune who, like Howard Hughes, simultaneously pursued aviation and moviemaking avocations.

Related Topics:
Carpetbagger - Howard Hughes

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Murray Schumach's review in The New York Times on June 25, 1961 opens: "It was not quite proper to have printed The Carpetbaggers between covers of a book. It should have been inscribed on the walls of a public lavatory." He complains that the plot is merely "an excuse for a collection of monotonous episodes about normal and abnormal sex—and violence ranging from simple battery to gruesome varieties of murder." A recent anonymous Amazon reader review observed that the book "seemed to be the same thing over and over again—business deal, gratuitous sex scene, business deal, gratuitous sex scene." Yet there is more to the book than this, and Schumach commented "If Mr. Robbins had no more talent than a verbose pulp-writer, it would be of no importance that the book is aimed so low. In the sections in which he avoids the lurid, he writes graphically and touchingly; on these pages, his dialogue is moving and his people have the warmth of life."

Related Topics:
The New York Times - June 25 - 1961

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On the day the review was published, The Carpetbaggers was already at number 9 on the Times bestseller list.

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The most successful of Robbins's many successful books, it was eventually to sell, as of 2004, over eight million copies. The profile of Robbins in Gale's Contemporary Authors Online makes the startling claim that The Carpetbaggers "is estimated to be the fourth most-read book in history."

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